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FURTHER CHANGE: Instruments of Change executive director Laura Barron fronted the organization’s annual concert in the Main-off-Hastings Imperial recently. As usual, it benefited the organization’s efforts to enhance societal well-being through arts education. Also as usual, it featured Barron’s former Forbidden Flutes partner, Liesa Norman, whose hip hop band, XL, will release its Trial by Liar album in March. Also on the bill, four members of the 12-strong Babyface band reflected the instruments-of-change motif with a peculiar instrumental combination — drums, trombone, soprano and baritone saxophones — that was entertainingly vigorous even without the ensemble’s tap-dance squad.

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HE KNOWS BUBOES: To ease medical-duty pressures in 2005, St. Paul’s Hospital emergency-physician Dan Kalla wrote Pandemic about a China-spawned virus putting the world in peril. Eight similarly grim but popular novels followed that instant best-seller. Now he’s returned to the well by completing a shocker titled We All Fall Down! about the grand-daddy of all pandemics. That’s the 14th century’s Black Death that killed possibly 200 million people, recurred often until modern times, and still has toeholds today. In the first of a two-book, global-sales deal with new-for-him publisher Simon & Schuster, Kalla resurrects the plague via the observations of a modern-day physician and a barber-surgeon in 1348 Genoa. That’s where, after depopulating Asian and Middle Eastern nations, the Yersinia pestis bacillus came ashore to do the same in Europe. That cosy opus put to bed, Kalla is writing his 11th: a contemporary murder-mystery.

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The Justice Institute of B.C. conferred a Doctor of Laws degree on Lorne Segal for long supporting youth advocacy and mental-health efforts.Malcolm Parry/PNG

SEGAL HONOURED: At a convocation ceremony on Thursday, Justice Institute of B.C. president-CEO Michel Tarko conferred a doctor of laws degree on Lorne Segal. The Kingswood Properties president was recognized for youth advocacy and such mental-health programs as the Courage to Come Back Awards he founded in 1998.

HOT STUFF: Surrounded by senior firefighters at a 1998 Justice Institute event, wisecracking late clothier Murray Goldman said: ‘We’re just talking about my next fire.” Less humorously, Goldman had lost considerable stock and many business records when his second-floor premises were gutted by an arson-sparked blaze below. “We didn’t own the building,” Goldman said, milking the situation, “but it happened anyway.”

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Australian consul Kevin Lamb and New Zealand consul general Nick Fleming hosted a celebration of their nations’ respective national days.Malcolm Parry/PNG

UP OVER: Icy rain lashed the Law Courts Inn’s windows as expatriate Australian and New Zealanders celebrated their respective National Days there recently. Along with diplomats Kevin Lamb and Nick Fleming, they likely reflected on fellow nationals basking in summer weather back home. Not all, though, as record numbers of Australians continue to visit B.C. Only Americans and Chinese eclipsed them in 2017, Lamb said, That despite Australia’s tiny 24 million population beside the US’s 322 million and China’s 1.4 billion. As for reversed seasonal celebrations, a colleague once photographed a turkey-and-plum-pudding Christmas dinner in humid, furnace-hot Papua New Guinea. In it, Aussies wearing only khaki shorts toasted a stuffed-suited Santa with “tinnies” of beer as he dispensed presents from a battered pickup truck.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: As Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket conveys his Tesla sports car to their neck of the Solar System, Martians may plan to trade-in the Oldsmobile Rockets, Ford Galaxies and Meteor, Mercury and Saturn sedans that earlier flying-saucer crews teleported home.

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